Tag Archives: Ireland

Bank of Ireland Plc will seek to impose losses of as much as 90 percent on 2.6 billion euros ($3.7 billion) of subordinated debt as it offers bondholders an exchange for cash or equity.

The lender, ordered to raise 5.2 billion euros of capital, said in a statement it expects to offer to pay cash of 10 percent of nominal value for Tier 1 securities and 20 percent for Tier 2 debt, with no settlement of accrued interest. The Dublin-based bank said it may also offer an equity-swap alternative at a premium to the cash offer with a payment of accrued interest.

One of the wishes that readers often express to me came true today (May 11). I was on the mainstream media. It was a program with a worldwide reach–the BBC World Service. There were others on the program as well, and the topic was Hillary Clinton’s remarks (May 10) about the lack of democracy and human rights in China.

I startled the program’s host when I compared Hillary’s remarks to the pot calling the kettle black. I was somewhat taken aback myself by the British BBC program host’s rush to America’s defense and wondered about it as the program continued. Surely, he had heard about Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo detainees, CIA secret torture prisons sprinkled around the world, invasion and destruction of Iraq on the basis of lies and deceptions, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya. Surely, he was aware of Hillary’s hypocrisy as she demonized China but turned a blind eye to Israel, Mubarak, Bahrain and the Saudis. China’s record is not perfect, but is it this bad? Why wasn’t the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs criticizing America’s human rights abuses and rigged elections? How come China minds its own business and we don’t?

Unlike other nations, including the U.S. and Ireland, which injected billions of dollars of capital into their financial institutions to keep them afloat, Iceland placed its biggest lenders in receivership. It chose not to protect creditors of the country’s banks, writes Yalman Onaran.

The €85 billion bailout agreed on [Nov. 30] between the European Union, International Monetary Fund and the Irish government will enforce the demands of the financial elite through the further impoverishment of the working class. It will ensure that those responsible for the current crisis are protected from any losses, while state finances will be raided once again to bail out insolvent financial institutions.

Paul Jay interviews Leo Panitch, the Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto. Panitch says that the Irish government’s decision to force the public to bear the private debt of the banks has caused its economic meltdown. He suggests that Ireland lead the way out of this class war by defaulting on the debt, and then nationalizing the banks and making them a public utility.

The international bankster machine seeking to colonize Western nations through debt is now meeting resistance from Greece, to France, to Ireland, to Italy, to Spain, to Portugal, and to the U.K.

These new protests in Ireland and Italy follow a crippling 2-week strike in France where citizens took over fuel refineries and other vital infrastructure, more strikes in Greece which took over the Acropolis, and a massive student protest in the UK that caused physical damage to government buildings. All of these protests were sparked by governments reducing benefits or increasing fees and taxes on a population that had little to do with the private gambling of banks.

Google, which encourages employees to “Do No Evil”, managed this past quarter to reduce its international tax rate to 2.4% of net income, despite earning most of its revenue in countries like the US, the UK, Germany, and Japan that have corporate tax rates of at least 25%. In comparison, the average recent effective US tax rate for 2,000 companies was 28.3%.

In a report published today in Bloomberg, Google was described as using tax techniques known as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” to avoid paying taxes in the countries in which it earns most of its revenue. Google uses a Dublin subsidiary and declares that 88% of its overseas sales are generated by this office which employs 2,000 people. Ireland maintains a very low tax rate to encourage foreign investment, but it then adds an important benefit: it allows companies to shift revenues to low-tax countries using transfer pricing. Google shifts its Ireland revenues to The Netherlands (Irish law requires using an EU country for the first leg of this shift). The revenue is then transferred to Bermuda, which has a minimal tax rate. In the meantime, Google uses transfer pricing to shift its expenses to high-tax countries in order to declare tax write-offs.Continue reading →

Taxpayers are being left with the bill and deeper austerity measures, but the government says the banks are too big to fail. Overnight taxpayers learnt they will be shouldering an even bigger burden to bail out the Anglo Irish Bank – to the tune of $41 billion.

Pope Benedict has accepted the resignation of Bishop John Magee of Cloyne, it was announced today.

Dr Magee stood aside last March over his handling of abuse allegations in his diocese. The announcement was made at 11am in the form of a press release issued through the Irish Bishops’ Conference, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Co Kildare.

The short statement read: “His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of the Most Reverend John Magee, Bishop of Cloyne. This announcement was made today in Rome at 12:00 local time.”